Month: September 2025

Culver Trees

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ECC Red Oak 9-24-25

I have to admit to not being up on all the rules about trees in Culver, but I definitely have a lot of confusion about enforcement. Several years ago (14+) one of the 100-year-old (or more) Oak trees in from of Easterday Construction received the Tree Commissions red mark of death. (Also an old wild cherry tree a little further north, that I didn’t care too much about.) At the time, I went to a Tree Commission meeting and was told this was due to a large branch that hung over the road and was a danger to vehicles. I protested that the branch was healthy, and they said I probably shouldn’t worry about it, since they didn’t have the budget to take it down anyway. They didn’t do tree trimming at that time, so it was a case of live or die for an old friend. I made my plea for life as best I could. I also made a donation to get a couple of replacement trees. (The only one that lived was the one they mistakenly planted on the adjacent property instead of at ECC!)

Since that time, the Oak tree has lived through several butcherings by NIPSCO tree trimmers for non-existent line interference, but fortunately it has remained healthy. Like all trees of that age, there has been, and there is currently, some minor deadwood, but that’s what trees do.

Face Palm

Last week, without any heads-up this time, they came out and removed that limb. They didn’t trim it, they took it back to the trunk. If I’d been given any heads-up, I would have gotten a “before” picture, but I didn’t know anything about what they were doing until the chainsaws were buzzing… They did leave me the sickly Wild Cherry Tree though… <sigh>

The tree is probably in jeopardy at this point due to this limb removal. It is the nearest to the camera in the picture (southernmost). Because it is in a cluster of three trees, most of it’s growth has been on the south side. Now it is distinctively top heavy to the south and west. Pretty sure the crew doing the trimming weren’t licensed arborists…

Despite the fact that this limb was never a problem in the 10+ years since it was designated a problem, it’s gone now. If the concern was damage to vehicles on the street, why didn’t they remove any of the deadwood that is there while they were removing the healthy parts? Aren’t the trees overhanging and shading the streets are one of the charms of Culver? <heavy sigh>

I found all this interesting, since we just had Emerson Wells from IU here this year and there was a lot of talk about preserving our tree canopy. While a couple of small trees have been planted at the Little League diamond, they hardly make up for the ones the school removed from the parking lot on the other side of the street. The north end of Slate Street could stand some tree additions rather than removals… There are a couple of unhealthy trees in this block of Slate Street, so it’s tough to understand spending the limited Tree Commission dollars to put one of the healthy ones in peril.

On a tangent, a truck took out the trees in front of 412 Lake Shore Drive a few years back. I was told that only one of the two could be replaced because of the proximity to the alley. I argued that a bit since it was just a dead end alley mostly serving two houses and there had been a tree there for decades, but to no avail. “Sight Distance” requirements would have been violated. So how is a new tree being planted at the NW corner of school street and Hwy 10, a much busier intersection? I’m left scratching my head…

I know there’s “a plan”, but but it’s pretty hard to discern. Government is not at it’s best when it is working mysteriously. I was at the last two Tree Commission meetings and this was not brought up. It was kind of lonely in the audience there, so there’s no doubt that it could have been. They know me. Such is life. Fingers crossed that my tree friend survives this. Time will tell…

Post Frame Housing

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Traditional Pole Barn with vertical steel siding and steel roofing. Image from CMT Components

A few years back, there was an effort to ban post frame (also known as timber frame) housing in Plymouth. A similar ban has been floated a few times in Culver and resurfaced at the August Plan Commission meeting. In both cases, the rational has been that the style doesn’t fit the community. As near as I can discern, (and I could be missing something) it doesn’t have much to do with the post frame construction, but more about the look of vertical metal siding, since these homes can be indiscernible from homes built using standard framing.

Post frame construction is most often associated with the “Shade & Shelter” functionality of Pole Buildings. Where post frame barns are designed to protect farm equipment, post frame homes are generally better insulated, stronger structurally, sealed tightly and have a different aesthetic. It’s just a different framing technique that has recently had a resurgence in popularity.

Post Frame Construction showing below grade piers, posts, girts & purlins Image from Roper Buildings

The main difference in this style of construction is the use of posts (poles) to provide the frost protection and uplift protection in lieu of the footings and frost walls used in standard construction. They are nearly always slab-on-grade (SOG) for the first floor. (Many standard construction homes are SOG as well, but standard homes could also have crawl spaces or basements.) Standard construction will use 2×4 or 2×6 studs at 16″ or 24″ on center to form the shell. Post frame buildings have posts spaces as much as 8′ on center with horizontal 2x4s girts to support the siding. Standard construction will have trusses or rafters at 24″ on center, where post frame buildings space out the trusses to bear on the posts and then use 2×4 purlins to support the roofing materials.

For a pole building, the big advantages are the ease and speed of construction. The construction is very forgiving. It is generally a big box to provide the most cubic feet of storage with the minimum of effort. They tend to leak and creak over time, but provide the basic shelter function needed. For a post frame home, there are a lot of enhancements:

  1. In standard home construction, the frost wall is insulated, in our area, down to 3′ below grade. In post frame home construction, insulation is added under the slab extending 3′ – 6′ from the perimeter to provide a similar thermal break.
  2. In standard home construction, there is continuous sheathing, generally OSB or plywood spanning the studs and providing the exterior diaphragm framing stiffness. In post frame home construction, this is provided by the wall girts which also support the vertical metal siding. Sheathing would still need to be added if a horizontal finish such as traditional siding or a brick veneer is used.
  3. In standard home construction, interior wall finishes such as drywall or wood paneling can be applied directly to the studs. In post frame home construction, it will be necessary to add interior girts to provide support for the interior finishes.
  4. In standard home construction, the wall depth is based on the stud depth, so in general there is a cavity of 5-1/2″, if 2×6 framing is used. Each stud is a thermal transfer point as there is no insulation between the interior and exterior at stud locations. In post frame home construction, the exterior wall thickness is determined by the post thickness (6″ or 8″) plus the 2×4 girt thickness on the interior and exterior, giving a wall cavity of 8-1/2″ or 10-1/2″. Unlike studs that create a thermal transfer from top to bottom, post frame construction reduces the transfer points to just the locations where the girts bypass the posts. This allows for super insulation, more than doubling standard exterior wall R values.
  5. In standard home construction, the roof framing is generally webbed trusses with OSB or plywood decking to tie things together and provide a substrate for shingles. In post frame home construction, either the trusses need to be moved closer together (generally requiring a collar beam) to allow sheathing on the trusses or the sheathing is installed over the purlins.
  6. In standard home construction, interior walls are often load-bearing. In post frame home construction, interior walls are non-bearing, allowing doors without headers, allowing standard slab thicknesses and often, greater stud spacing.

While some of these homes embrace the barndominium style, such as the one to the right that even includes a simulation of a silo, they often are hard to distinguish from their neighbors. It’s not the framing that determines the exterior aesthetic, and in many cases you wouldn’t know the framing style if you didn’t see it under construction. Three of the apartment buildings at The Paddocks have a definite barn aesthetic, yet they were stick-built.

Stating that the style doesn’t fit the community seems a particularly curious thing to say about a home in Culver. Culver has a myriad of building styles ranging from traditional to bungalows to A-frames to geodesic domes. Culver has exterior finishes ranging from siding to painted concrete block to limestone to fieldstone. The siding breaks down to various styles including vertical, horizontal and diagonal. We have buildings with vinyl, steel, aluminum and wood siding. Culver is allowing new construction to expand in size to the point that they encourage replatting/combining of small lots to accommodate the larger construction.

Some communities establish aesthetic requirements. Culver doesn’t have these. As it stands, they’re zoning decisions are based mostly on safety. Post frame verses traditional framing is more of an issue for building codes and as of this time it is allowed. Many would object to the use of vibrant colored residential standing seam roofs as not fitting the traditional aesthetic, but nothing has been said about banning those. Personally, I’m fine with the diversity. Culver shouldn’t stoop to the level of a group of Karens. A flock of Karens is known as an HOA. Culver shouldn’t go there. (Neither should Plymouth…)

Culver Zoning Revisions

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Steve Gorski, Culver Building Commissioner, has stepped up to the task of updating the Culver Zoning Ordinance. Having served on multiple committees to do this, I know this can be a mind-numbing and somewhat thankless task. This was one of the goals of the 2024 Comp Plan and Mr. Gorski has tackled it. At the last meeting, he presented a lot of the changes and corrections he is proposing. It wasn’t really open to the public for discussion, but was handled as a line-by-line presentation to the commissioners.

For 100% of what he presented, I appreciated what he was trying to do and the clean-up it represented. I think there was 10% that could have been improved by some additional input. My concern with the current approach being taken is two-fold:

  1. Mr. Gorski is the Building Commissioner, so naturally he tends to look at things from the administration and enforcement side of things. While those are relevant and extremely important, it doesn’t always pick up the implementation side that is important to the citizens when they try to comply with the ordinance.
  2. In the past, this has been done by a subcommittee, involving Plan Commission members and members of the public. While Mr. Gorski has a good working relationship with the Plan Commission, it’s harder for the Commissioners to question his suggestions since they are more personal than if they were created by a subcommittee. It’s impossible for one person to do this without it being affected by their personal experience. That is tempered by a committee. (Though this can easily double the time it takes to do this work.)

There is also the factor that Mr. Gorski has only held the position for a couple of years. I’ve written about “Institutional Memory” here before. This applied to more than a few items that he suggested changing. A couple examples just in the category of height restrictions:

  1. In the existing ordinance, there is a restriction that accessory structures in the residential districts have a height limit of 16′. This was added to the ordinance because multiple permits were issued for garages that later had a second floor area remodeled into a second residence, which was not permitted. Mr. Gorski has been questioned multiple times about this and would like it remove it.
  2. In the existing ordinance, the S-1 district allowed accessory structures to have a height of 50′, above the regular height restriction of 35′ in other districts (except A1 – Agriculture). The 50′ limit is there to accommodate grain elevator legs from before there was a separate A1 district. It was left in the ordinance during the last revision so existing farmers in the S-1 weren’t forced to rezone to comply if they added an elevator to their silos.

The ordinance is meant to be somewhat of a living document, so I am by no means saying that these things are written in stone. But the institutional memory of why they are there, could temper the decision to change them.

A couple larger items I struggled with on the changes were:

Image borrowed from the Strong Towns link (Hierarchical Zoning) to the left.
  1. Many of the tweaks, were to address current recurring problems, such a setbacks on small lots. I whole-heartedly agree with the thought process that the ordinance should be changed to reflect the reality of variance being given. Where I struggle with this is in the tweaks being made to setbacks in the R-1 district (as an example) to eliminate current setback issues on existing small lots, without considering how this would affect new lots with the larger lot sizes recommended by the ordinance. If the smaller existing lots are acceptable in R-1, then change the ordinance so new developments mimic the existing. Else, leave them intact as aspirational to what is desired in new construction. Or create new districts and district overlays to accommodate the current needs.
  2. The Comp Plan suggested some major changes in how zoning is handled. In some ways, it suggests moving away from Euclidean Zoning to more Hierarchical Zoning. This wouldn’t have to be done all at once, but could be done in steps or waves. Much of what is currently being fixed reinforces the current Euclidean Zoning. I did bring this up in the public comment section of the agenda and those that seemed to agree with me felt that fixing what we have is a good first step towards this. I hope that’s true since I know sometimes things get busy and major change is hard.

Overall, I commend Mr. Gorski for taking the bull by the horns and moving something forward. I hope the Plan Commission continues to work on this and takes the next steps recommended by the Comp Plan.